Nomination
The motivation for our Pounding Heart project was the desire to bring more art into our lives through the fusion of aesthetics and science. We wanted to create something that’s appropriate for public spaces as well as the private sphere.
Our idea is to visually depict heartbeat frequency by means of a piece of sculpture. While participants wearing headphones listen to various acoustic situations, the change of their pulse is measured by an electronic device, which sends the registered data to the sculpture, where it’s visualized with light. The concept video shows what the performance looks like and suggests what other areas of application there might be in the future.
After giving this plenty of consideration and staging a few brainstorming sessions in autumn 2017, we agreed on an experimental project. It’s designed to be visually appealing and to enrich the lives of people in the future. We then began to develop storyboards, which we completed in early 2018. Videos were shot and animated films created. Then came the post-production. Finally—and just in time—we created an audiovisual form.
If and when the project actually comes to fruition, we’ll produce a 30-centimeter-high fiberglass sculpture in the form of a slightly abstracted human heart, within which are LED fixtures that blink in time with the pulse of the individual linked up to the sculpture. The connection is made by a pulse measuring device that sends the information via Bluetooth to the LEDs’ receiver. The sculpture could be set up in a hospital, a living room, or an office, whereby the particular purpose it serves there is up to the individual.
Credits
Yasmin Litschauer (born in 2000), Chiara Mazanec (born in 1998), Aisling Pircher (born in 1999), Laura Scheidl (born in 1999) and Johannes Zottele (born in 2000) attend Vienna’s High School of Graphic Arts where they major in Multimedia. They’re passionately interested in design and art as well as high-tech. After graduation, all of them plan to pursue creative studies.